Medicine
by dantesdarkqueen
Summary: A rare look into a Turk's head, showing the side we never get to see. The man behind the goofy mask... The heart hidden in the guise of the assassin... All confessions are given to booze, when it comes to Reno of the Turks...


**Summary: **A rare look into a Turk's head, showing the side we never get to see. The man behind the goofy mask... The heart hidden in the guise of the assassin... All confessions are given to booze, when it comes to Reno of the Turks...

**Disclaimer: **I don't own Final Fantasy 7 or Reno. You'd never see him again if I did! Unless you had the right amount of cash, that is...

**Queen's Quornor: **I've been considering doing another soliloquy for less than a week. Really, I wasn't planning on anybody beyond Seph, Lucrecia, and Jenova. But there I was, walking into the gym, and suddenly I get to wondering about Reno, and how there seems to be so much of a contrast between him in the game and him in the movie. From there the thought changed to the two sides of his character, both of which are displayed beautifully in the movie: the humorous goof and mostly-good guy we catch brief glimpses of in moments like when he picked up the kid, and the grim, serious man who seems to appear whenever he's on the job. Explain it? I can't. But I did get this feeling that I _had _to write this soliloquy. And the idea hasn't left me since I first came up with it. So, here we are. I hope you enjoy this brief foray into Reno's head. I seem to enjoy bringing out the human side in my favorite characters...

Medicine

_They say alcohol cures all wounds. That it's some kind of magical, mystical medicine that lets you forget your troubles and be at peace, if only for a few hours. A brief flash of time in the limitless expanse of one's life, a single drink, and suddenly the world's rosy-fresh and fine and dandy. Nothing's wrong, nothing was ever wrong, and nothing ever will be wrong. _

_Bullshit._

_Beer doesn't make you forget. It doesn't help you stop remembering. It's not like a mental eraser or some shit like that. If anything, it _makes _you remember. Unless you drink enough that you relinquish consciousness, like me. A lot of people wonder why I drink like a fish every time I go out to a bar. Hell, I've even had people try one of those fucking stupid 'interventions' before, trying to get me to stop drinking._

_I let my EMR speak for me whenever somebody tries to take my beer away. _

_You have no fucking clue, do you? There's a reason I put my liver through the grinder every Friday night and weekend like this. It's not because I like the taste of beer or anything like that. Hell no! Stuff tastes like piss. I prefer hard liquor, especially vodka and rum. But I have less tolerance for beer; helps me get shit-faced quicker. _

_And why, you ask, would I intentionally try to drink myself into oblivion? _

_Because I don't want to remember._

_You have no idea, some of the shit I've had to do for this job. I've axed innocent people, shot up women and blown men into tiny pieces of flesh and a fine mist of blood. I've made Ifrit-only-knows how many kids into orphans, wrecked countless lives. I've done things most people can never even dream of, the kind of activities that haunt their darkest, scariest nightmares. _

_And for what? A nice, fat paycheck every month? The admiration and lust of hundreds of loose women, along with more than a few 'nice' ones? Access to some of the sweetest technology known to Gaia, and the privilege to use it whenever I want? License to kill? The chance to hang with and guard the lives of some of the most powerful people in the world? Proximity to confidential files and information that shouldn't even exist? Allegience to the 'winning' side? The chance to play either hero or bad guy, depending on whatever I'm told to do?_

_To be honest, I have no fucking clue anymore. Why _do _I stay in this job, when they can't kill me for leaving the Turks anymore? WRO forbids any truly fishy business, like killing ex-Turks to protect company secrets and assassination techniques. If I wanted to get out, Shinra wouldn't be able to stop me. I'd live to see the next sunrise. And the ones after that. I could still die, but none of my coworkers or buddies would have my blood on their hands. _

_I'll be straight with you. I love my job. For all those reasons I listed before and a few others. _

_But... _

_There's a lot of things I could really live without as far as my job goes. I have a whole damn garbage truck full of regrets; something like 99.7 percent were due to me being a Turk. _

_Like all those kids I've made orphans. I lost both of my parents, too. My dad abandoned me and Mom when I was still in diapers, and Mom died of a fever when I was twelve. I know what it feels like to go home and have nobody waiting for you, to be alone. To know that the only person who ever gave a damn about you, who took care of you and loved you, is gone forever. That you couldn't protect them. There have been more than a few times when I have had to look through a sniper scope or even go in myself and kill someone, and watch a little kid run in and discover the body of their mommy or daddy. It kills me every single damn time I have to watch some kid find out that their parent is dead. It's even worse when it turns out that there's a baby in the house, and that parent was the only one looking out for the kid. _

_I always get wasted after a job like that. _

_The absolute worst one was when I set the bomb that made the Sector 7 plate fall. I know I sounded really cocky when I confronted Cloud, Tifa, and the big dude on the support pillar; I was there, remember? I sounded like a real jackass, even to me. You'll never know how many nightmares I had after the plate fell, for weeks on end. Every single damn time I closed my eyes, I would have these visions of the people dying under debris, or falling to their doom, crushed in their own homes and trapped, with no hope of rescue. I always heard the screams, saw their eyes. That was what bothered me the most: their eyes. They were always so wide and terrified, pleading for somebody to save them. _

_But nobody would. I know how Shinra worked back then. Unless it was good for business, the Prez would not have lifted one fat finger to help the people of Sector 7. And he didn't, so obviously it wasn't. _

_I hated that man. _

_Things have gotten better since Meteorfall. Tseng and Rufus don't send me or Rude or Laney out to whack innocent people so as to 'send a message' like the Shinra Fat-asses did. I still have to kill people sometimes, but not nearly as often as I did before. Mostly, we Turks are just bodyguards and investigators these days. _

_I don't mind. If I'm not hurting anybody, I'm not remembering them after I've clocked out and gone home for the night. People don't haunt my dreams anymore. I still have nightmares, but there aren't really any new faces in there. Just the old, familiar ones. _

_I wish there was a way to say I'm sorry. A way to apologize to all those people I hurt, the living and the dead. I wish I could go up to them and ask for their forgiveness. I don't mean all of them, of course. Some of them deserved to get whacked! It's the innocent ones I have nightmares about. They're the ones I regret. _

_I know what people say about me. They call me a heartless killer, a murderer with no soul. They say I'm a sex-crazed drunk, a womanizer. I've even been accused of being a druggie a few times. I won't deny my sins; booze isn't the only thing I turn to for the chance to forget, if only for a minute. I know I deserve the names, and the labels. I don't deserve the chances normal people get. I gave them up when I became a Turk. _

_I knew what I was giving up. This was my choice, and I do not regret that, at least. _

_It's the things I've done that I regret. _

_That's why I'm so grateful for the people who still give me those same chances, knowing what I am and what I do, what I _have _done. Rude, Tseng, Laney, and Tifa all give me the chance to be human again. So many people can't forgive me, but they have. I'll never be able to repay that kindness, but I wish I could. _

_Just another thing added to the list of things I wish I could do, and never can. Just like apologizing to all my innocent victims. _

_You can say what you want about me. I don't care. I probably deserve it. _

_But don't you dare judge me as someone who does not care. This is my life, this is my job. But I'll relish every feeling of regret and pain my actions bring me, every laugh and every tear. _

_As long as I can laugh, as long as I can cry, I'm still human. _

_That's a better medicine than alcohol can ever hope to be, far as I'm concerned. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise. _

_Now, get out of my face. I have some things I need to forget._


End file.
